Congressional Democrats Retreat On Earmarks

Not yet a year into their domination of Congress, House Speaker Frisco Nan and her Senate counterpart, Harry Reid, have already broken their promises to reform earmarks.

Reid has contrived the Senate processes to now require his, and only his, personal, unpublicized opinion as to whether a bill complies with the chamber's earmark rules. So much for sunshine as a disinfectant.

Meanwhile, over in the House, they passed a bill containing the word 'ethics,' but have left the earmarking process largely intact.

In fact, Fox News recently reported a story wherein Pennsylvania's pompous and arrogant member, John Murtha, Frisco Nan's failed candidate for House Majority Leader, inquired, in a debate concerning a spending bill, whether a Republican member had a preferred special interest who needed to be 'taken care of,' in relation to the bill at hand.

The subject was a military need for a special paint, which Murtha had arranged to have provided, sans competitive bids, by Sherwin Williams. Further, while the government paid for the experimental process, the vendor would hold title to any patents or assets resulting from the contract.

What was truly horrific was the Republican member's recounting of Murtha's presumption that the member must be opposing the bill because he had another special interest in whose pocket he was.

With shenanigans like this occurring, I continue to dispute those pundits who think that the House and Senate remain Democratic locks for 2008.

Frisco Nan's About Face on Earmarks

The Democrats in the House of Representatives have truly disgraced themselves these past few weeks.

David Obey, Chair of the Appropriations Committee, attempted to explain why he and his colleagues were reneging on Frisco Nan's promise to reform earmarking.

In and editorial in The Wall Street Journal on June 13th, Obey is quoted as saying, regarding examining earmarks,

"The only real opportunity you have to prevent something stupid from happening is to have the protection of the staff who know the most about these programs and can fight something if they think it smells."

Great. Government by staffers. Like any staffers will dare to take on some other Democratic Representative for whom they do not work?

Obey went on to 'reform' the earmark process so that no earmarks would be publicly discussed before voting.

In the same Journal article, the LA Times-Bloomberg survey reported that Congress' approval rating is now down to 27%, with 63% of voters saying it's "business as usual."

By the way, that 27% rating is lower than the President's.

Apparently, after pressure brought about by Republicans in the House, Obey and Nan finally relented on keeping earmarks secret prior to the House-Senate conference report.

So much for a new era of responsive government under a woman Speaker. Or Democratic Speaker. Guess the gender doesn't really matter, after all.

Frisco Nan's Fiscal Promise-Breaking

Last week's tussle over pork being stuffed into the Iraq funding bill provided voters with a clear view of how Frisco Nan (Pelosi), the House Speaker, has already broken her promises for better fiscal management of the budget.

Her main man, Pennsylvania Rep John Murtha, was caught threatening Mike Rogers, a Republican, with a total elimination of any funding requests for his district, because Rogers challenged a specious earmark project in Murtha's district.

According to the House's own rules, this type of intimidation and coercion is supposed to be illegal. So much for the Democrats new broom sweeping clean.

In fact, they had to lard the Iraq funding bill with quite a bit of pork, in order to tempt some of their own party to vote for it, despite it being vetoed the first time around.

As I wrote in my prior post, here, the Congressional Democrats are on record now breaking promises, left and right. Mostly left, of course.

Seriously, they've tried to unplug the funding for the war in Iraq, but without actually taking responsibility. They've now returned to earmarking, and even last minute insertions of them, a la Tom Delay- something they vowed to 'clean up' if they won control of the Lower Chamber.

Honestly, you can't make stuff up that's as good fodder for election campaigns as these actions by the liberal House Democrats.

Another reason to have bright hopes for a return to Republican control of at least one House next election, if not both, even by slim margins.